Balázs Eszter: Art in action. Lajos Kassák's Avant-Garde Journals from A Tett to Dokumentum, 1915-1927 - The avant-garde and its journals 3. (Budapest, 2017)
Hubert van den Berg: Lajos Kassák, the Viennese Edition of MA and the “International” of Avant-Garde Journals in the 1920s
ish dictator Józef Pifsudski as “Intermarium”, was most certainly indeed not Kassák’s piece of cake. In their avant-garde allegiances, Kassák and MA were - in terms of Huizinga - rather bridge in-between. Mediating were Kassák and MA also in other respects. “AVANT-GARDE” VERSUS “AVANT-GARDE” In 1922, several attempts had been made to establish a “Constructivist International” as an organisational umbrella to unite different groups and journals with constructivist leanings, initially at a meeting in Düsseldorf, where the local modern artist’s association The Joung Rheinland, together with a consortium of other artist’s German associations had organised an international and congress to come to a “Union of international progressive artists” in Düsseldorf in May 1922. Constructivist minded groups, with artists around De Stijl, the Russian journal Bemb/Objet/Gegenstand [Object] published in Berlin and MA as initiators tried to use the opportunity of the meeting to come to a “Constructivist International”.37 38 This attempt failed and second attempt in form of an “international congress of constructivists and dadaists" organised by Theo van Doesburg on the doorsteps of the Bauhaus in Weimar was no success either.39 The attempts to establish a “Constructivist International" in 1922 did fail largely as a result of conflicting opinions concerning the question, how this artistic “International" had to be positioned next to the communist “Third International", which claimed to be the ultimate “avant-garde" both in politics and in cultural affairs as well. The question, to what extent, art in general and Constructivism in particular had to be subordinate to the “dictatorship of the proletariat" and to follow instructions from the communist party as the “avant-garde of working class” in Leninist terms, led to fierce debate and a fundamental 37 Bernd Finkeldey-Kai-Uwe Hemken-Maria Müller-Rainer Stommer (eds.), Kl. Konstruktivistische Internationale schöpferische Arbeitsgemeinschaft (1922-1927), Utopien für eine europäische Kultur [K.I. Constructivist international creative working community (1922-1927), Utopias for a European culture], Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen-Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg, Düsseldorf-Halle, 1992. 38 Cf. De Stijl, “Congress issue", 5/4., 1922; De Stijl, “Constructivist International issue”, 5/8., 1922. 39 Gerda Wendermann, Der Internationale Kongress der Konstruktivisten und Dadaisten in Weimar im September 1922, Versuch einer Chronologie der Ereignisse [The international congress of constructivists and Dadaists in Weimar in September 1922, Attempt at a chronology of events], in Hellmut Seemann (ed.), Europa in Weimar, Visionen eines Kontinents [Europe in Weimar, Visions of a continent], Wallstein, Göttingen, 2008,375-398. 28
